Editorial policies and news discourse – how Al Jazeera’s implicit guidelines shape its coverage of middle east conflicts

Abstract

The article examines Al Jazeera’s internal guidelines. It focuses attention on the broadcaster’s editorial policies and practices, how they are created, the way they shape news content, and whether they are documented or not. It attempts to shed light on the role of external stakeholders and regulatory devices with a say on the editorial line and subsequently the type of internal editorial policies and practices journalists are required to pursue. It presents a comparative study and analysis of the network’s two major and most influential channels, namely Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, the arguments in support of their editorial policies and practices, and the arguments opposing them. It scrutinizes how different forms of internal guidelines and regulatory frameworks affect the network’s discourse, ties with its financiers, and relations with the outside world. Finally and based on the findings obtained through interviews, and linguistic discourse analysis, the article outlines how internal guidelines come into being in the case of Al Jazeera and how they eventually influence the final product.